Special Skills

I worked briefly in a television and film casting office back in the day and I would have to look at thousands and thousands of actors' photo & resumes. Invariably at the bottom of the resume was a section called, Special Skills where they would list extra talents that they had. It would say anything from accents they could do (which they never actually could) to the fact that they could roller skate to even the fact that they could drive. This was because legions of acting teachers would tell them to write everything there because you never know what the casting people are looking for. I mean who knows? They might be totally unimpressed with your audition or what plays you've been in or what you look like but hey, you just might nail that job because you had the foresight to mention that you can operate a toaster. Include that in your 'Special Skills'!



I've long since stopped using any form of a resume because, A) I'm a comic and I don't have to, and B) I'm too lazy; but if I am ever prevailed upon to put one together again I would like it to be all Special Skills. You can come watch me in a comedy club then I'll hand you this list and that had better be enough for you:

Jovanka's Special Skills


*Is well liked by cats
*Can do Russian accent when speaking Dutch
*Is not afraid to pick up chickens
*Can type lots of words per minute as long as I'm allowed to look at the keyboard
*Can crochet anything as long as it's basically square in shape
*Can drive a car, but won't.
*Has double jointed elbows
*Can do a near perfect London accent but only when very, very drunk
*Has an extraordinarily good sense of smell
*Can burp on command
*Can make vegan Bailey's Irish Cream
*Can usually guess what sign people are
*Extremely gifted at folding laundry (but needs help with big sheets)
*Good at photography as long as people/cats hold still
*Can walk in high heels, but only about a minute at a time
*Can pee while walking (field tested!)
*Can tell if places are haunted, even just from a photo
*Can laugh uncontrollably during awkward silences at family gatherings
*Is so good at cards that other people hate her for it
*Can sneeze on command
*Can dance, but not in front of people
*Is good at deflecting blame
*Can eat hotter peppers than anyone
*Can ride a bike, but not in traffic
*Can walk so fast that it annoys people
*Can walk so slowly that it annoys people
*Very good at drawing cats
*Can operate can opener - but not those weird German ones
*Good at making rice
*Can do some yoga poses
*Can waste entire day on Facebook
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Alcorexia

I've been on a diet recently - (WHAT ELSE IS NEW??!!) - and beginning about 2 weeks ago I started diligently counting calories again because that really is the only thing that ever works. So anyhoo, Friday evening, knowing I'd be meeting my friend Julie later, I thought I'd be ultra responsible and save calories for the drinks. So I ate 300 calories and figured I'd have 700 calories worth of beer.

Clever, huh?

So as I'm sitting there at the bar I thought, OK, 700 calories is really only about 3 1/2 beers to be fair, so if I want to get the most out of my drinking experience I should drink the highest alcohol content available. I was forgetting two very important facts:

1) I have no tolerance for beer even when I'm not on an empty stomach.

and...

2) I live in Belgium where they mean what they say when they say, "strong beer".

So basically what I drank was equivalent in alcohol content to about 8 beers in a country where sadistic monks aren't in charge of brewing everything.

On an empty stomach.

Crazy? Hmmm. Yes, perhaps a tad. Needless to say I got quite sick. And when I say I got sick I mean that I spent the next DAY AND A HALF throwing up so much that stuff I ate in previous lifetimes was coming up. ("Where did all this barley pottage come from?", quoth I.) And as I was laying there in agony all I could think was, "I purposely drank on an empty stomach! What the hell was I thinking of???!!!" ....But it turns out there's a name for this syndrome: Alcorexia. Yup. In America where they can turn anything into a syndrome (that eventually there will be a pill for), the act of a person substituting alcoholic calories for food is dubbed Alcorexia.




But here's the kicker: like the syndromes' more sensible sisters Anorexia and Bulimia, Alcorexia does in fact work. Scarily so as a matter of fact. First of all, I was violently ill so whatever calories I'd had before The Event are now somewhere in the Atlantic; and secondly, I couldn't eat at all for a day and a half. I was pretty much guaranteed to lose weight - and don't think I wasn't cognizant of that particular silver lining even while my head was in the toilet. Healthy? No. But beauty hurts.

And here's the best part: Now that I've been purged I am starting from a totally clean slate. So starting yesterday (Monday) I've been eating the fresh-fruit-and-vegetable diet I've always been meaning to eat but could never quite bring myself to, and I'm not even hungry!!! That's right, I successfully kick-started my diet with an alcoholic binge! Woo hoo!

So if my success continues - and I have no reason to doubt that it will - I shall pen my own self-help diet book, tentatively titled, Drink yourself to a Size 4, projected release Spring 2011 (when I shall look fabulous in all the "after" pictures).

Tacky? Un-"PC"? Offensive? Hell yes. But can you name anything successful that isn't?
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I've Been Cat Surfed

Cats have a natural aptitude for surfing. I know this through personal experience of having been a surfboard for several of them the past few nights.

Just as I'm trying to get to sleep, one cat will stand on my butt, one on my legs, maybe another one on my upper back. And yes, I said, "stand" mind you. Because what they're doing is waiting for me to move so they can start surfing me.




Perhaps the word "logrolling" would be a more apt description.



The rule of the game, as far as I can tell, is to remain in the same place on top of me as I attempt to roll over. It doesn't matter how much I move, it only seems to make them more determined to stay on. If I attempt to kick them off, they only relish in it.

It's very demeaning.

And the Hawaiian shirts only add insult to injury.







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Being socially inept is not for the faint of heart.

I hardly ever know how to act ever in any situation. I just don't have all the normal boundaries that other people take for granted that tell them when they should smile, when they shouldn't smile, when it's appropriate to climb a tree, and other such things. I know this is not my fault - it's because I was raised by crazy people - but still it's hard to deal with when someone points out that you've just been doing something that everyone else thinks is weird. Like putting as much popcorn as you can possibly fit in your mouth rather than eating one piece at a time, or picking up pigeons who look depressed, or asking strangers if they have gum. But the worst imposed-on-me-by-the-crazy-parents habit I have is this thing where I feel I must do my best not appear sick when I go to the doctor.

It's a weird, weird trait and there are probably all sorts of psychological reasons for it which I won't bore you with, but the upshot is that the more sick I'm feeling, the more fabulous and entertaining I look and act. Mr. Jovanka is the first one who pointed this out to me years ago, and now whenever I go to the doctor he gives me a mini-pep talk beforehand where he looks at me and says, "Don't act like a monkey".

But I forgets......

So today I was sick. Really sick. I've had this whole ongoing inner ear thing going on. I've actually been in bed for a few days feeling horrible. So I went to the doctor. Mr. Jovanka reminded me repeatedly on the drive there not to act like a monkey. I had a whole mantra in my head saying, "you're sick, act sick", and still what did I do? I acted like I was at a cocktail party. I didn't realize it at the time of course, but afterward Mr. Jovanka gave me a review and pointed out how nicely I'd been smiling and all the various jokes I'd cracked (some of which were quite good actually, but surely that isn't the point?).

Luckily the doctor looked in my ear and apparently the symptoms spoke for themselves and he was able to overlook the fact that I was acting like Liza Minnelli.



Once years ago in Los Angeles, I got hit by a car as I was walking across the street. I was thrown in the air and smashed the windscreen of the car and ended up laying on the sidewalk surrounded by people as we all waited for the ambulance to arrive. I had a concussion and a fractured leg and tailbone and I have never been funnier. You should have seen how I was working that crowd. I absolutely killed.
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In Defense of the Salted Potato Chip

Mr. Jovanka and myself have friends who are a couple like we are and lots of times we go over to their house to hang out or play cards. We always go over to their house because our house has 10 cats in it and we are worried about possible smells that we might not be sensitive to. We are nothing if not considerate. So anyway, we've been going over to their place for about the past 4 years now and we are only just now breaking them into buying salted potato chips instead of the funky flavors. The last time we went over to their house all they had on offer were some sort of barbecued chips and spicy Thai prawn or something. I took matters into my own hands and did this very clever ruse where I asked loudly and obviously where the nearest potato chip shop was then I made a show of asking specific directions and telling people to just wait a while because I might get lost. I even stood up and started patting all my pockets and moving towards the door. Finally Nico offered to just take his bike to go get the salted chips himself which had been my intention all along (I'm very good at this stuff).




Is it too much to ask that people should have simple salted snacks on hand? We don't think so. Besides, we have a medical excuse since we are vegans and the funky flavored ones always have some sort of dairy product/beef extract/dung in them.





I have waged a lifetime war against the freaks of this world who want to desecrate the taste of potatoes with their nasty artificial flavorings. When I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, it was fairly simple: There were salted or Barbecue flavor. When, also as a kid, I lived in London, it was slightly more complex with the addition of cheese & onion and salt & vinegar flavors, but still you knew where you stood. Their two extra flavors were based on established pub food. It was all very Olde Worlde. I mean they even called salted crisps, "Ready Salted" as they had only recently apparently taken on the technology of pre-salting the crisps. Before that crisps came unsalted with a salt packet inside. I always imagined British parents guilting their children with, "Oh you kids these days don't know how easy you've got it. Why when we were your age, we had to reach our hands into the packet, look for the salt and do the work ourselves. We didn't have time for fun and games. We were too busy doing our own food preparation. You kids live like royalty!"





Fast forward to today and the Brits love the whole flavoured crisp thing. In fact they've taken the concept and run with it to the point where you're hard pressed to find plain crisps nowadays. Here are some of the flavours you'll find on offer if you innocently ask for a packet of crisps at any pub in England:


"Ready Salted" - of course the big selling point here being that they have been pre-salted for your convenience. Odd though how none of the other flavours will be listed as "Ready __________". I guess putting salt on things requires an extra effort.



"Salt & Vinegar" - the one flavour that I can at least understand. Chips (a.k.a. "fries") are often served with vinegar and salt in the UK and it is awfully good, so it would stand to reason that the flavoring would translate to a different form of potato. It doesn't. They're vile.



"Marmite" - OK. Marmite is an acquired taste, the enjoyment of which is already conditional: It's best served on toast (not bread, toast) for instance, and it tastes awful unless you combine it with margarine (at which point it tastes divine). And you have to know exactly how thickly to spread it or it all gets ruined. And now you want me to trust that it's going to taste alright when converted to powder form and splattered on crisps in a factory? Not bloody likely!




"Tomato Ketchup" - a title that is wrong on so many levels, first and foremost of which is the redundancy of calling it tomato ketchup. WHAT OTHER KIND OF KETCHUP IS THERE? That's what ketchup is! Ketchup is, by definition tomato ketchup. That would be like calling a wine, grape chardonnay or referring to a tobacco cigarette or stupid conservative (thank you people, I'll be here all week).....and furthermore WHY on earth would you want a quasi-ketchup flavoring embedded into your potato chip when surely the more elegant choice would be to dip your chip in your own ketchup?




"Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding"......which begs the question, why not just eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding? If they make roast beef and Yorkshire pudding that tastes of potato chips will you eat that? Freak.



"Builder's Breakfast" - I'm going to go out on a limb here, British cuisine being as diverse as it is, and assume that a "Builder's Breakfast" isn't much different from the classic "Full British Breakfast" which consists of eggs, bacon, blood sausage, toast and runny baked beans in tomato sauce with two unexplained tomato slices on the edge of the plate. How you'd manage to get this cacophony of flavors orchestrated into one synthetic powder to smear on the crisps is beyond me.



What do the Portuguese eat for breakfast? Does it really warrant a tribute?




Again: If you need to taste this then why not just go and eat the actual - oh, never mind.



Yes, it says, Cajun Squirrel. Yes, it's an actual flavor. No, I don't know if they have plans to flavor chips after the Eastern Grey or the Red European varieties, nor do I know whether there are people who would be able to taste the difference.







I am sorry people, but frankly I would like all the nonsense to stop. Plain old salted potato chips/crisps are something that everyone can agree on. Serve them at a party or when you have your nice friends over to play cards and no one will complain. The fancy flavors just make you look ridiculous and like you have no morals. It's all clearly getting out of hand and if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. You know I'm right.
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Something Horrible in the Air

Let me start off by saying that I am not the sort of comic who does fart jokes. In fact I would go so far as to say that I am offended and almost violently opposed to the forays into scatology and snickering locker room humor that sometimes pass for comedy. The odd spattering of poo, that's fine once in a great while as a sort of accent. But you will never find me on stage reciting a set list that revolves exclusively around things that take place in the vicinity of one's pants. Having said all that I must now discuss an event that involved a fart. Please consider what follows my lone odd spattering of poo.



So the other night after my show I was standing around talking with a Dutchman, two Belgians and another American. I make mention of their nationalities as their different cultural reactions to the situation are what I am taking note of here. So as I say, we were all talking when suddenly we were engulfed in a fart so foul as to defy description. Now here's where the varying cultural reactions came in to play. The Dutchman and the two Belgians didn't react at all. Myself and the other American however had an immediate observable physical reaction. I stated the obvious, "I think someone just farted.......It wasn't me! (it wasn't)", then the other American who is, I think, arguably much more American than me and certainly of the more outgoing variety, quickly feigned an excuse and left. I thought, dammit, why didn't I think of that? But at that point if I had suddenly up and left as well it would have turned the whole thing into a Much Bigger Incident than it had to be.

So what happened next is interesting. I verbally reconfirmed that yes, someone certainly had farted to which the Belgians sort of looked down at their hands and the Dutchman - who I psychically knew was the one who had done the fart - CHANGED THE SUBJECT and acted as if nothing had happened. I ask you: Could there be a more obvious admission of guilt? I mean if it had been me, (and again I assure you that it wasn't), I think I would have at least had the wherewithal at that point to act as if I was offended by it like everyone else in an attempt to deflect ownership. But actually I'll go further to say that if it had been me (and again, it wasn't), I would have had the forethought to physically remove myself from the group before the thing had detonated so to speak. I mean what sort of person thinks they're going to get away with something like that?

The Belgian reaction was the oddest I think. Why did they look down? Were they that embarrassed by the fart? Were they that embarrassed by my mention of the fart? Were they praying that someone would light a match?

Clearly this is one area in bad need of some sort of cross cultural etiquette. We should all Know What To Do in these situations; what our roles are. Most importantly I think it should be the duty of the perpetrator to either remove themselves (as I've said) or failing that to shout a warning so that innocent bystanders can run for cover.
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Inside the Mind of a Neurotic Performer

So I debuted my new one woman show this past weekend. I would tell you how many years it's taken me to get my shit together to finally write this, my second O.W.S., but then you would surely shift all the numbers around and figure out that I am older than the trees and the very archetype of laziness. I much prefer for everyone reading my blog to imagine me about 22 and a plush comedy prodigy. It is so much more attractive to think of comedy as having been magically bestowed on me rather than to face the grotty reality of years and years of scribbled rantings on bar napkins, drunken brawls and dysfunctional relationships with road comics while I crawled night after night to the clubs to try out my fledgling little jokes on spiteful crowds before going home to pass out in a pool of my own tears.

So here's something that I've rediscovered about myself: Sometimes I just don't hear the laughter. Take last night for instance. I came off stage thinking that I had done so badly that I would be pelted with stones and chased through the streets by angry villagers, only to be confronted with audience members coming up and telling me they thought I was funny. So strong was my psychotic self loathing though that I had to actively suppress the urge to scream, "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?!!" at them before morphing into Charles Bukowski and drinking myself into the fetal position. But I did suppress it. Now here's the thing: there are two different extremes of comedy psychosis out there. There are those who, like me, sometimes don't hear the laughter; and then there are those who don't hear the silence. Of the two extremes, mine is definitely the more productive one, because at least when one doesn't hear the laughter one makes an effort to improve ones' act if for no other reason than to stop the voices. Those who don't hear the silence however have a completely opposite and one might even argue better experience. Because to them everything they do is genius. Rather than coming off stage in a cloud of doubt, they basque in the glow of an enthusiastic laugh track that only they can hear. I have known a few such comics. One in particular has done the same act for over 20 years, never had a genuine laugh and never seen a reason to write anything new. But this guy is not only happy, he is also touchingly proud of his work. If a team of psychiatrists were to evaluate the two of us, he would be awarded gold stars in every category. They would "ooh" and "aaah" over his supreme contentedness and his sense of self-actualization. Me they might have committed for further study so Freudian students could stare at me over their clipboards and say things like, "Did you really have all your work removed from YouTube because you thought you were too fat?"......Because honestly I'm willing to bet that can't-hear-the-silence guy never wakes up in the middle of the night hyperventilating because of how he messed up the delivery of his cat joke. And he is a happier man for it.
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Nothing Larger Than Your Elbow

I am writing this blog entry with my head tilted sideways. Why? Because I have an ear infection. And how did you get your ear infection, you might ask? Was it from something exotic like swimming in a polluted sea? Something modern like listening to music with those annoying little "ear bud" thingies? Was it from radiation absorbtion whilst talking too much on your mobile phone? No, no and no. It was from my habit, nay, my pseudo-sexual obsession with cleaning my ears with those cotton swab ear stick thingies.

Yes, I've heard the warnings like everyone else has against inserting foreign objects into your ear canal. But why was it I was never warned against the domestic ones? Like Q-tips (a.k.a. "Oorstokjes" in Dutch)? These things are an evil temptation and a LIE. They are marketed as ear cleaners and yet always with the caveat that you shouldn't stick them in your ear canal. Well WHERE ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO STICK THEM? Did you honestly expect me to just gently dab at the outside of my ear with them? Well I'd hardly need a STICK for that, would I? These things have given me numerous ear infections. And yes, I've heard all the folksy things about not sticking anything in your ear larger than your elbow (which is impossible, by the way. Yes I've tried), but once you've actually gone in there with a cotton covered stick you'll always go back for more because it's fabulous! You don't know how much you want to scratch that place until you do and then you can't get enough! And the thing is it's all the better if you give yourself a slight infection - just enough for a little itch - because the satisfaction of scratching it is unbelievable. So yes. I was playing with fire. I was walking that fine line. Frankly the danger was part of the appeal.

After Mr. Jovanka had witnessed my second self-inflicted ear infection, he took to actually hiding the Q-tips from me. This only prompted me to go out and and acquire my own stash and keep them where he wouldn't know about them and find times to sneak away and use them unseen because I am that much of an addict, yes an addict people. But where is my 12 Step Group? What would anyone even call us?

So anyway here I am, ordered to rest, administer ear drops and not poke at myself. And you have NO IDEA how much I want to right now.

Stop judging me.
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Life's Little Triumphs...

My favorite dress shop in Gent is a place called Paleis - sort of my dream dress shop with funky bizarre looking dresses in off the wall patterns and colors. But going there was always a bittersweet experience for me. I'd delight in looking at all the clothes, but on the rare occasion that they would actually have an XL in something (the shop is very S, M, L with a definite emphasis on the "S") I'd fight the voices in my head screaming, "No! No!" at me, and try it on. More often than not the experience would end with me having an existential crisis in the fitting room as I realized I couldn't even squeeze my fat arse into the biggest size they had, then I'd quickly buy one of their funky handbags to cheer myself up (handbags are the fat girl's solace) and waddle home (then likely drown my sorrows in several toasted peanut butter sandwiches followed by a microwave pizza).

Wellllll, today I went there, ostensibly "just to look", ended up trying on stuff and fitted into and bought a dress and a skirt that are size M/L!! And they fit nicely too with no lumpy bits! Apparently running 40 minutes a day for the past 6 weeks has paid off! I'm now back in normal sizes!!! Wooooo hoooo!!!!!


I'm on the road to thinness!




P.S. Stay tuned for future Ultra Boast Blog when I get down to an "S".
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My Manifesto

I think it's a good idea that everyone have a manifesto just in case they should ever find themselves in the position of being the leader of a fascist dictatorship. It would certainly be embarrassing to be in that position and not have a manifesto. Success is when preparedness meets opportunity after all, isn't it?



Anyway I have given this some thought because I think it's clear that the world would be a much better place if I were in charge of everything. Thus:

My Manifesto

The Terms:

1. Everyone in the world must be a vegan.

2. Everyone is entitled to a sandwich (or its' equivalent) on demand.

3. No More Wars - Since I will be in charge of everything, there will be no international conflicts. Should smaller territorial disputes occur, they will be settled by the local leaders engaging in a wrestling match or spelling bee (to be determined democratically)

4 Penal System Reforms - There will be no death penalty. People who do forgivable things (theft, armed holdups where no one got hurt, etc.) will serve their terms by doing the little jobs in society that no one else wants to do. This will include but not be limited to vacuuming, cleaning cat boxes, doing the dishes and reorganizing people's sock drawers. People who do really horrible things like violence towards other people or animals will have to serve their terms doing things that no nice person should ever have to do like cleaning toilets in Calcutta, cleaning up barf at music festivals and numeric filing. Society will become a happier place when ordinary law abiding citizens are no longer encumbered with these tasks.

5. All art will be subsidized.

6. All political campaigns will be publicly funded - private funding will be forbidden. This means that it will no longer be a prerequisite to be rich to run for office. Candidates will be chosen based on their performance in a series of public debates where their identities will be concealed in funny Disneyland costumes and their voices will be digitally obscured. No one will be allowed to reveal their age, race, gender or sexual preference until after the winner has been chosen. Half the fun will be trying to guess who's under the Donald Duck costume.

7. Anyone can marry anyone else they want to providing that all parties want to marry each other.

8. Anyone can practice whatever religion they want as along as they are able to shut up about it when they are on public transport.

9. Automobiles will be swiftly phased out in favor of bicycles/horses in metropolitan areas. There will be stiff laws in place ensuring the proper treatment of the horses and many public stables in lots of convenient places. Automobiles will be available for certain situations on a temporary basis. Handicapped people will have special permission to operate electrically run cars that do not exceed 20MPH in metropolitan areas.

10. Marijuana will be legal. Other drugs will be legal in specified spas and resorts where there will be staff on hand to make sure everything's cool.

11. Hiring for jobs will be based on actual aptitude, not on what some moron thinks having majored in Theater does/does not qualify you for.

12. No more airplanes except in mountain rescue situations. If you are traveling to a different continent you can take a ship. It's time everyone stopped being in such a hurry. Besides, ships are fun. All your onboard meals and entertainment are included. What could be wrong with that?

13. There will be one day a year when everyone has the day off (except for the prisoners who will have to run all the public services on that day) and street parties are mandatory all over the world.

14. Televisions will only operate for three hours a day (you get to choose the hours) and there will only be three channels, mostly showing news and cat documentaries. If you want anything else you can rent it on DVD.

15. Local police forces will be replaced by Knights, complete with shining armor. They will all be very handsome but menacing when required.

16. Guns will not exist. And only the police/Knights will be allowed to have broadswords.

17. Individuality will be encouraged. If you are middle aged and want to wear a Prima Ballerina outfit everywhere it will be applauded. Even if you are female.

18. There will be a ban on nasally angry elf sounding music like that produced by Britany Spears, Lady Gaga and similar. If you can't sing properly you don't get to record music. Period. Also no more dances that look like they were choreographed by air traffic controllers.

That's all I've got for now.
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The State of My Brain

I haven't posted a blog in a month. I keep thinking about it and now I feel obsessively guilty about it but I really can't come up with anything. And the more time that goes by the more pressure there is to come up with something spectacular or at least interesting enough to warrant all the non-bloggage. But no. I've got nothing.

Here's what I've been doing all the time: Running. I'm now running 6 days a week, 5k each time. I wish I had something even vaguely interesting to say about that but I don't. Maybe - and I'm not looking for an excuse here, but the thought did occur to me - just maybe all the exercise is dulling my thinking. Yeah, that's it. That sounds right. Perhaps as my butt gets smaller my IQ will also drop accordingly. Perhaps after months of this running malarky I shall be one of those mindlessly stupid women with a fabulous ass. Ah, what the hell. That actually doesn't sound too bad.

Then my blog will be all about shoes.

I'll call it, "What This Pretty Lady Thinks About Shoes".

And I'll update it every hour.


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My Menstrual Cycle Has a Body Count

One puzzling aspect, from an evolutionary standpoint, of the human reproductive cycle is P.M.S. or Pre-Menstrual Syndrome. On the day when this "syndrome" manifests, the lady in question - lets say me, for instance - tends to get overcome by misanthropic thoughts at the slightest provocation.

The lady in question - again, let's use me as an example - might go for a run to try to dissipate the cloud of rage and psychosis that nature has inflicted on her and rather than any of the angst being relieved, it seems that nature, and indeed every annoying person within a 5 kilometer radius, conspires to try the lady's patience. Bicycles narrowly avoid hitting the lady, people don't take the hint and move out of the way on narrow walking paths even when the lady coughs loudly several times to let them know she is approaching, and big white vans back carelessly out of industrial driveways nearly hitting the lady and causing her to make a public spectacle of herself when she spontaneously shouts, "Holy fuck!" at the top of her lungs. The lady is then left to carry on running, inaudibly mumbling obscenities at people on the street who are staring at her.

It's horrible and unfair and the lady fights back tears as she curses the fact that she has to go running in the first place and wonders why she couldn't have been born one of those people with a naturally skinny ass, and then just as she's thinking this, the lady is almost hit by a car as she's running across the crosswalk even though it's the car's duty to be watching out and pedestrians were on this planet first and why the hell do we have to have cars anyway? "Fuck cars", the lady thinks. She will be glad when they no longer exist. They were a bad idea to begin with. They never should have been mass-produced for the individual consumer. At most they should have been used as emergency vehicles. The car is the reason for the downfall of western civilization. It is the pus that oozed from the carbuncle of the Industrial Revolution. "Fuck the Industrial Revolution", she curses under teary breath, and not for the first time.



.......So anyway, back to tying it in with evolution, what purpose was PMS supposed to serve? Was it to thin the herd? Were cavemen who pissed off the ladies at the Wrong Time removed from the gene pool with a club to the head by a lady who was just out trying to get a little exercise?


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Who Killed Ceramic Jesus?

For half a year, since I bought Him at a rummage sale, there has been a Ceramic Jesus sitting in our window. The cats have been peacefully sitting in the window with Him while he guards the house or whatever it is Ceramic Jesuses are supposed to do. There was never any conflict, never any rivalry between Ceramic Jesus and The Cats; While they weren't exactly "buddies", there was certainly never any reason to suspect that things could ever go terribly awry, but today I came home and found this:



Ceramic Jesus had been brutally murdered and I knew that the culprit was still somewhere in the room. But none of them were talking. I knew it had to be one of the cats as they are avid secularists, but they were all curled up in various places pretending to be asleep. Since cats are notoriously uncooperative under interrogation anyway, I thought the best way to ascertain guilt would be to photograph the suspects with what was left of Ceramic Jesus and look for guilty reactions.



First I photographed the girls, Peanut and Vienna. They looked so deceptively sweet it immediately aroused my suspicions, but on examination of the photograph I can't detect any guilt.



In fact when Peanut was photographed alone with Ceramic Jesus, she looked downright traumatized by His condition. Next I moved on to Bram and Angelo:



.....And here I noticed something interesting. If my eyes aren't deceiving me, it looks as though Ceramic Jesus is inching toward Bram (on the left) and casting a somewhat wary eye towards Angelo.



Do I detect a glint of fear? Hmmmmm.......

So just to mix things up, I photographed Ceramic Jesus with Angelo and Papa Steve.



This time Angelo is seated on the left and is Ceramic Jesus - - ???......Why yes, I do believe Ceramic Jesus is pointing at Angelo!



Yeah, that's right. You've been caught!



You can run, but you can't hide, my friend!!


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I Got Inspired!!

In the various places I have lived I have found things to love and hate about each respective culture: In America I can't stand the way they say "Awesome" every 5 seconds and take a pill every time they have an upsetting thought, but I love the customer service; In England I can't stand the customer service (or lack thereof) and the pathological evasiveness, but I love the way they solve everything with a drink; and in Belgium I can't stand the mandatory three kiss thing, and the fascist cyclists, but I love what freaks the people are.



Belgians are slightly kooky. Perhaps that's news to some but on closer examination you'll certainly be led to the conclusion that a people who gave the world Magritte, The Smurfs and The Singing Nun must have some sort of collective quirky gene.

So it was hardly surprising when I read about this guy:



His name is Stefaan Engels and he has set out to run a marathon every day in 2010. When I first read about him on January 1st I thought, "What is this guy, Insane?"..... How can a human being run 365 Marathons in a row? That's 42k! (26 miles) I can't even walk on the treadmill twice a week!....(Well OK, to be fair it's because I can't be bothered to walk to my gym - It's a 15 minute walk followed by a climb up 6 flights of stairs - what are these people, sadists?!).....Then I happened to catch my reflection in the mirror. From the side I look like I'm pregnant - with triplets. And while it's nice to be offered the occasional seat on the bus from young mothers who smile knowingly at my extended gut, it's not a look I'm terribly proud of. Then I had an epiphany.: if this Stefaan Engels guy can run 42k a day then surely I can run 5k a day?!



So the very next day, January 2nd, I went out to Watersportsbaan where he and his entourage are doing their thing and I joined in. The track is exactly 5k around which is convenient for me. So I've been getting out there and doing once around. I'm not nearly fast enough to run with the cool people clustered around Stefaan Engels, so I just plod along at the pace I can do right now. On the days when I run at the same time of day as them I will at one point hear what sounds like a stampede of Buffalo and my heart races a bit as I brace myself to get trampled by The Entourage.



They are moving so fast that they probably have no idea I'm even "running" - most likely they just get mildly annoyed with the chubby lady who appears to be standing on the running path. As they pass me by they seem so cheery , all chattering and laughing and ultra cool looking. It would almost hurt my feelings but I just tell myself that they probably wouldn't be able to run as fast as that if they were carrying two large bags of cat food (that's what I've used as my reference point) on their butts as I am.



So that's my new goal: to shed the bags of catfood and run fast enough to hang out with The Entourage. To look all effortlessly fit and happy while I fly around the track 3, 4, 5 times like they do. To hear what it is that they're talking about!

.......With my luck the first conversation I hear will be: "Hey whatever happened to that chubby lady who used to stand still on the running path?"



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